I Became Stalin?!

Chapter 143

The Thousand-Year Reich of Germany, which seemed to last forever, began to crumble from its roots.

The first to fall was Belgrade, the capital of the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which was besieged by the Soviet army and the partisans. 

The second-rate troops stationed in the Balkans were no match for the Soviet army, which was elite and well-equipped with tanks and aircraft after fighting many battles.

The German Balkan Field Army had to abandon Belgrade and retreat to Hungary and Italy. The only ones left behind to fight to the death in Belgrade were the 16th SS Division “Free Ukraine” and the 21st SS Division “Skanderbeg”, composed of recruits from the Balkans.

According to those who had surrendered to Nazism, they were the sacrificial pawns to open the way for the Germans’ retreat.

They knew what awaited them if they were captured: a more brutal treatment as traitors. 

They resisted the Soviet army desperately.

“One, two, three, fire!”

Boom! Boom! Boom! 

The Soviet army’s 152mm howitzer spewed fire. It was like a thunderbolt for the SS soldiers who were holed up in the buildings.

To reduce the casualties in the urban warfare, and to liberate Belgrade as quickly as possible, the Allies adopted an extreme method. 

They ordered each division and brigade to assign small units with heavy mortars, and use them as direct fire.

Each company was allocated one or two medium mortars. 

The Soviet army, towing the mortars with tractors, entered the assigned areas and buildings, and started by blasting the buildings where they suspected the enemy was hiding.

There was no scream.

It was impossible to tell whether there were any unlucky enemies caught in the shelling. 

The 7-kilogram explosive packed in the 152mm shell was excellent at grinding the fascists along with the bricks and concrete of the buildings.

Ratatat, ratatat.

Machine gun bullets flew through the shattered window frames. 

The weapons that the SS units resisting in the city had were only that much.

They were left behind to face the Soviet army, armed with fighters and heavy artillery, with old Kar98 rifles, a few machine guns, and at best a few grenades. But there was no time to feel pity for them.

“Enemy machine gun on the third floor window! Adjust the angle and fire the 120mm mortar!”

“Yes! Loading!”

It took only about two weeks for the Soviet army, the partisans, and the Bulgarian army, totaling nearly a million, to surround and capture Belgrade.

The 30,000 armed guards put up a fierce resistance, but Tito’s partisans, burning with revenge, crushed them more thoroughly.

“You bastard! You killed my wife and child!”

“Those scum! They all deserve to die!”

The armed guards who resisted knew well. 

The hatred that seeped into the bones of the Serbs. 

The Belgrade residents who had lost their families and suffered abuse by the German occupation forces threw stones at the German prisoners.

“Long live the Republic of Yugoslavia! Long live Marshal Tito!”

“Long live General Secretary Stalin! Long live the brotherhood of nations!”

The army marched in the center of Belgrade, which was destroyed but liberated. 

The Yugoslav partisans smiled brightly and waved their hands as they received the flower petals thrown by the citizens. 

The Soviet soldiers also greeted the citizens proudly as they rode their tanks.

After that, the red flag of the Soviet Union and the tricolor of the newly established Republic of Yugoslavia flew together. Along with the armed guards who were trampled and torn, holding the swastika.

Whether it was Stalin or Tito, they would treat the enemy according to international law, but they had no intention of sparing the traitors of the nation. 

The traitors of the Free Ukraine Division were destined to be dragged to a camp somewhere in Siberia. 

The traitors from the Balkans were waiting for punishment according to their crimes.

Tito wanted to make the anti-German war a kind of ‘nation-building’ opportunity. 

The enemy of the nation, Germany, the blood-bound ally, the Soviet Union, and the united nation! 

For this, he needed a sacrifice to calm down the hostility that had accumulated over time.

As the Red Army shone brilliantly, the fate of the German army became more miserable.

“Horthy of Hungary was kidnapped and his whereabouts are unknown… Do we need to advance to Hungary?”

“The decision of the nation will come from Stavka. There was no order from the General Secretary yet.”

Tito, who had become the president of the Republic of Yugoslavia, insisted on launching an offensive to reclaim the ‘unrecovered territory’, that is, the Croatian puppet state under Italian occupation.

As long as the former regent Horthy Miklós was kidnapped by Germany and the fascist Arrow Cross Party took power, it was unlikely that Hungary would switch sides like Romania. 

Wouldn’t it shake them more to advance to Italy, the homeland of the Axis? That was his argument.

But the commander of the Balkan Front, General Malinovsky, was silent. The Soviet army was now launching offensives not only in the Balkans, but also in the north and the center. The enemy commander, Field Marshal Model, was delaying the Soviet advance with efficient defense against the massive offensive.

Therefore, the General Secretary ordered not to expand the front too much. To cross the Alps and go deep with a single front army? 

That was too obvious a gamble.

“There will be one decisive offensive. Prepare the army for that. We will also be ready for that.”

“Hmm… Okay!”

It took time to reorganize the partisans into a real ‘army’. The General Secretary talked about the decisive blow and ordered all the front armies to prepare for rapid maneuver.

The reorganized Yugoslav People’s Army, the Romanian Army, the Bulgarian Army, and the Balkan Front Army. Malinovsky had to restrain his laughter as he expected a heavy offensive targeting the southern border of the Axis.

***

“The defense treaty with Germany was signed in the name of the former president, no, the traitor Risto Ryti, and the Finnish parliament never ratified it. Our Finnish interim government hopes to end the war with the Soviet Union and is willing to put the traitor Ryti on trial for war crimes.”

“Is that the only official intention of your government?”

“…Here is the negotiation proposal we brought.”

There was no more choice for Finland after Germany suffered a defeat and retreated from the Leningrad siege. It was not just a matter of degree of defeat, but the Northern Group Army, which was supposed to stop the Soviet army in the north, was cut in half.

The furious Soviet Union came up to punish Finland, which had been watching Germany’s side. 

The Finnish government’s opinion was to quickly surrender and reduce the damage before the Soviet Union came up.

No, to be precise, it was the opinion of Mannerheim, who had virtually made the Finnish army his own organization.

The Soviet army’s General Govorov, who led the Karelian Front, had already recaptured Viborg, Finland’s second-largest city, which had been taken away in the Winter War and regained, and was advancing to Helsinki, the capital.

The Finnish army could not afford any more losses. The German 20th Army had suffered a huge loss in the Leningrad siege and shrunk to the size of one corps. The 700,000 Soviet army that pushed through both Karelias was too much for the 300,000 Finnish army to handle.

In the Winter War of 1939, the Finnish army succeeded in stopping the first offensive with half the size, taking advantage of the terrain, the winter weather, and the incompetence of the Soviet army. But there was no way to stop the Soviet army that came back with twice the invasion force.

All the government officials remembered the nightmare of their last defeat, when they lost a quarter of their army in an instant and had to surrender.

“Please, spare our people from wasting more lives, whatever you ask of us…”

President Lüthi was a puppet set up by Mannerheim, but his sense of responsibility was genuine. He ordered to comply with the Soviet’s demand for his life. Foreign Minister Tanner, the head of the Finnish negotiation team, remembered his tearful face.

The Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov, who met him for the third time, smiled with the ease of a winner.

“Karelia is the lawful territory of the Soviet Union. So is Viborg…”

“…”

Molotov’s thick finger swept over the border area between the two countries. The Soviet Union wanted as much buffer zone as possible for the security of Leningrad.

Of course, that buffer zone was Finland’s core industrial area. But what could they do? The loser had no say. The Finnish government, which had lost tens of thousands of young lives in vain in the last war, agreed to accept any condition as long as it was not a complete annexation.

“Also, we want to enter Norway and Sweden, which are occupied by the fascists and cooperate with them, through the Lapland region… ‘even’.”

Tanner’s head buzzed when he heard the name Lapland.

The Soviet Union had seized Karelia, the prime territory of Finland that accounted for 11% of its land and 30% of its industrial production, in the Winter War of 1940. And now they wanted to take another 30% of the reduced land, 100,000 square kilometers of Lapland?

Molotov waited for Tanner’s answer with a smile that seemed to burst into laughter at any moment. ‘Even’ might not last long. They might just swallow it up and ignore them.

But Finland had nowhere to lean on. 

The United States had chosen the Soviet Union as its partner to fight against Germany and Japan, and Britain, which President Lüthi had always hoped for, had fallen.

If they gave up Lapland, they would become an island in practice, with only the Soviet Union as their land border.

“I will request the ratification of the treaty by the parliament…”

“Oh, and one more thing.”

“Yes?”

Molotov’s lips curled up more and more. He seemed to enjoy the situation of feeding Finland to the fire, after being mocked by the Molotov cocktails for a long time.

“When you ratify the treaty, dissolve the parliament and hold a new general election. We also consider the current Finnish parliament as an accomplice of the war crime that ignored the invasion war. We do not regard Mannerheim’s government as a negotiation partner. For the new general election, we want to send a monitoring team from our Soviet Union to prevent the ‘election fraud’ of Mannerheim and his gang… How do you want to do it?”

“…”

It was over.

What was the Soviet’s ‘monitoring team’? The ones who would be elected in the new general election would be the Soviet’s puppets, meaning they would make Finland a vassal state.

Tanner glared at Molotov with bloodshot eyes, who revealed his blatant ambition and seemed to burst into laughter at any moment. Did he want them to change their country to the Finnish Soviet Republic?

It would be possible if some of the high-ranking officials were executed by the war tribunal. 

Tanner himself had vowed to do the same if necessary, after seeing President Lüthi’s self-sacrifice declaration. But if they were to die like dogs?

“Please give me some time to think… between death and submission…”

“Hmm? What did you say?”

He muttered the last words under his breath, so Molotov exaggeratedly gestured to repeat it, putting his hand to his ear and pretending to be surprised.

“Think… time to think…”

“Ah! I’ll give you a week! The secretary-general is running out of patience these days…”

“…I understand…”

The loser had no say. The Finnish people could do nothing when hundreds of thousands of red army were ready to continue the iron dialogue.

***

The red army started to clean up the periphery of the battlefield rather than actively fighting the German army under Model’s command.

The Western European allies, such as France, Spain, and Italy, could not actively dispatch troops because of the unrest in their countries.

In the meantime, the withdrawal of the Eastern European allies was a powerful means to weaken the German army without a costly battle.

“Yugoslavia and Balkan guerrillas, out. Finland, out. France, out…”

The estimated allies marked in black on the map disappeared one by one.

Only our allies painted in red remained.

Balkans, Turkey, Finland, and the restored regions of Estonia and Latvia! Hungary became a puppet government, but it was out of the question since it couldn’t even defend its own country. 

The only thing left was the German army’s main force, which was suffering from the cold and the supply.

Now, they were using all kinds of tricks, even mobilizing the Volkssturm for the last struggle, but the end of the war was approaching.

“It’s time to make the fascists taste the horror!”